I think, though I'm not sure, that mabshoff has perhaps misunderstood my points, probably because my post was too long, for which I apologize. As I said, this post was very much in the conciliatory spirit of Jason Grout's original one. In particular, I was emphatically not addressing any of the issues raised by Ted, most of which I am entirely ignorant of, and I am sorry that I implied it because of the reference to "show me the code", which I referred to more generally than its actual use in the thread. (I'm not even sure what problems there are with the notebook, and if someone wants to leave Sage because of that, it's their business.) Similarly with reference to "victim to its own success", in which I only referenced things from frustrations I've seen aired on the list, and which I may have overinterpreted; I was not referring to sage-newbie, because it was clear what happened there. The references to "brusque" and "trivial questions" were intended to be hyperbolic. Ah, electronic communication - nothing like it :)
In general I tried very hard to use terms like "many" and "likely", precisely because I know how many different situations there were, and wanted to make it clear I was generalizing only in a limited fashion, but still hoping to raise an important issue. In fact, I agreed with most of the (nontechnical) things mabshoff said, though the place I said that may have gotten obscured. Sage is definitely healthy, definitely friendly, definitely catches tons of bugs (which I do explicitly say), and definitely has the potential to involve lots of education people beyond what it has - precisely because of the relatively unified nature of mathematics, which is so immensely salutary. The reason I refer to different roadblocks and things like where people are employed is because I want that to succeed, and I have been very proactive in promoting Sage where I can. I do not see any viable open-source competitor, and it is neat to read about where Sage also beats the proprietary competition. But my main point remains - and I would welcome suggestions on sage-edu - that there is a difference in kind between the research environment and the teaching one. A research mathematician likely has time, resources, and vision for implementing research-related code *largely on her own* with help from lists or IRC if determined, and hence will be able to develop the expertise, and all this falls squarely in her duties. This isn't always true, but it is likely, if she is determined. (Presumably Jason, as a grad student and postdoc at PhD-granting institutions, is in this category, and David's expertise is of course long-standing.) It is also likely that a teaching-focused mathematician has only two of the three, if he is lucky, and may not get much support from administration for developing the others, and hence won't be able to, even if determined. This isn't always true, but is likely, especially if he is earnest in devoting attention to the students who would benefit from Sage in the first place. (I think my chair is in this situation, as he's installed Sage on our local server, but has had difficulty getting octave to play nicely with Sage where he wants it to. I have told him to email sage-support more times than I can count, because there is probably an easy solution, but I think realistically he just made a choice to not try further as the semester started. This is fine - not everyone has to use Sage - but he is also someone with a lot of experience in mathematical computation and server administration, so it gives me some pause as to my own ability to do something significant without guidance.) I totally hear you on the political aspect of educational grant- seeking. Maybe a friend of Sage would have a friend who has been successful in that arena and could consult or even advocate for Sage? I see many projects which, while useful, are not just not in the same league as Sage, but maybe like AA baseball (or Landesliga, for that matter) compared to the pros, yet which routinely get NSF CCLI grants and supplements. Anyway, it's possible that this is really all inherent, which would be too bad, but sometimes things are like that. I thought I'd raise it, though. If Sage could have even half as many education-focused developers (which I am sadly not, at least not yet) as it has research or internals developers, even if they aren't as competent, Sage should easily be able to surpass the competition in that arena as well. Thanks as always for a fantastic product, and thanks for the continued invigorating discussion. (No irony intended!) - kcrisman --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
